


truncated treatise on tragedy

by failsafe



Category: Portal (Video Game)
Genre: Blood, Character Study, Dark, Gen, Injury, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-23
Updated: 2015-06-23
Packaged: 2018-04-05 17:54:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4189401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/failsafe/pseuds/failsafe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Who really wins when she can't be free?</p>
            </blockquote>





	truncated treatise on tragedy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ijemanja](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ijemanja/gifts).



_caduta_

 

_ You're still shuffling around a little, but believe me: you're dead.  _

The words don't carry much tone over the ringing in Chell's ears. It's still hard not to hear them when she feels herself living them out like a prophesy. Had being in the coldest, most harshly clinical place ever devised by a human being made her place all her faith and superstition on a machine?

On a monster?

And does it matter anymore when all she can do is squint her eyes open, making an effort to look up into the light?

Her whole body hurts, but especially her legs. From somewhere at the knee downward, she wonders if she still has them at all or if the surgically grafted-in braces have somehow torn them clean off. After considering it, she's pretty sure she feels her toes somewhere below the slow, warm ooze and trickle from wounds on either side of each leg.

Still conscious, still aware, she realizes that if they were gone she would have already bled to death.

Lifting her head, she sees clearly the first glimpses of sky and the tangled gray that makes up the ground. It's different than on the inside, where everything is nearer white and it's hard to tell the floor from the ceiling, up from down, bright lights and heaven from acrid smoke and hell.

A haze of white seems like a corona around a darker color. She knows it's supposed to be blue, but she can't tell it apart from the gray, sharp smell that has followed her out here into fresh air. Labored breaths draw more and more of it into her lungs and for a few seconds she experiences its sweetness through all the pain and the fading feeling in her head.

She sees the flames still licking up from a point, not seeming to spread from where they leech up, searching for more air to consume. Fire has nearly consumed her within the last day, and it's the last and first day she remembers being able to keep track of in a long time. The next color she notices is yellow. Its most obvious source draws her attention first – eye to eye, but there is no light there. The eye isn't the only source of yellow, and it snakes out from beneath her into a familiar shape she can see beyond herself. She begins to understand and remember the nature of this place where she's landed.

New weight pulls at her chest and her adrenaline-fueled heart seems to slow. Peace and panic seem equally as likely as she tries to understand, and she doesn't know if she feels either.

She has grown so used to fear that she can only define it by its degrees and causes, but the fear she feels now is new. A sign reading _Aperture_ even touches the sky. Even if she found a way to get to her feet, to crawl on her knees across the rough and gray earth, she doesn't know how she can scale the fence that is cruelly guarded with angles of barbed wire. She hasn't seen barbed wire since this began, and like many things she doesn't know exactly where its name comes from in her mind.

All she knows is that it's a different kind of faceless teeth.

Her wounds continue to seep and ooze and trickle and drain her blood. Their edges seem bigger and more defined. Then they start to fade too until everything but her eyes seems to be going slowly _offline_.

Darkness sweeps over her field of vision, and it offers little relief when she realizes it was only a blink. No amount of trying to marshal her strength and will more than a twitch into her legs works. Even for her, the agony is too much of a deterrent. And she's weak. Weakening. Weaker still with every passing moment, every falling breath.

Beyond the barbed wire, there is another color – fuzzy and almost glittering in her gaze, now. It's the only color that seems different up here. _Green_ is something she hadn't seen much of down there, an when she had she'd dared not look down. The disgust that had washed over her at the sick, rotten smell of the green-brown-red putrid sludge had kept her from giving it any more attention than had been absolutely necessary. Rather than poison, this green called and gave promises. Her arm slides along the ground. She's glad she got to see it. For a second, she imagines what it'd be like to reach it. She won't, can't, but what if...?

She has to...

_This isn't brave. It's murder._

The green promises life, and even in the face of it she doesn't feel a speck of remorse. And yet, it brings up the question... 

What if she dies here? 

What would have been the point? Is it really worth it if she  _gives up_ now? If she  _can't_ ... 

“ _Thank you for assuming the Party-Escort Submission Position.”_

The words are too garbled to her by then to be comical or cruel. She feels the inertia and realizes she's being moved, and the only thing that dawns on her is that there is no other way. There is no choice, and there never was. The cost of her freedom is a body too broken to continue. 

And as her body is conveyed, tug by tug, along the ground, she gets a last glimpse at polished white shards that share her fate. 

The dark, still air returns before her body stops being dragged and is hoisted as if by crane onto something that makes her feel as though she is floating with irregular bursts of speed toward a destination she cannot see. She looks up at black and gray panels and wires that spill from them, as torn open as her legs are where the prostheses are gone. It's the only thing she can see except for the fleeting memory of living green that dances, improbably, in her field of vision behind her eyelids. 

The vision is taken from her in all but memory when her eyelids crack open again to be confronted with pinpointed red light. A low, long cool fills the hallway with an echo and more red lights dot along her skin. She tries to move, to make herself small, but a blunt arm reaches out and keeps her lying flat. 

The low cooing multiplies as new, cold blue light washes away the constantly-adjusting dots of red. It begins to have a melody, low and long. She thinks she must be imagining it until down a long, long hallway she hears distant words she can't quite make out. The stillness of the air had been deceptive. The facility seems more alive even though she had imagined everything would  _stop_ without the voice guiding them all along. 

She wonders where they are taking her, but her strength is too far gone to stop them. 

When the large, lumbering, whirring robot comes to a stop, she is blinded by an even brighter cold blue light. There is a cruel sawing sound, but it's small and very clearly to the left of her. It gets a little further away. She glances around, but she can hardly see a thing past the spotlight. 

Somewhere, a distant and different voice screams, but she can't place it and doesn't know what it means. 

The saw hums once more and she looks up to see something bright and clear that looks like clean water – but it isn't for her to drink. It's in a needle, and she watches as the arm arcs down to find her arm. The joint mechanisms on the mechanical arms that seem to work without eyes or guidance look confused and cowering while they work. She doesn't see them for long because the arm that pierces her skin delicately, painlessly, fills her weakened blood with something that puts her to sleep. 

As she loses consciousness, she realizes they are sparing her from agony. She doesn't know why. 

It seems deliberate, quiet, and as different parts of her brain fall asleep for a while, she knows that somewhere they are singing for someone. She doesn't know if she feels panic or peace when she thinks they don't want her to leave. 

While the less-aware robots in the medical bay work, the turrets continue to lead their curious chorus.  


Somewhere, they fire their ammunition into a fray while their sisters sing. 

There is a man there, and She had said he shouldn't be. 

She was gone now, and so they sing. 

They do not know that he has painted her while the gentle, temporary poison saves her from the sting of repairing her fragile frame made of flesh. If they had known, it might have made a difference. 

Silence comes again, but still they sing. It happens less and less, fewer and far between, but even once She is gone and dead and asleep, they all know the same song. 

They know the story... the terrible, wonderful, fantastic story... of how a human slayed the Queen. 

**Author's Note:**

> I really hope you enjoyed this! It was sort of intended to be a companion piece to the rising, triumphant idea of _Cara Mia Addio_ in the inverse at the end of the first game. While I love Portal 2, it always breaks my heart to realize that Chell made it but then gets dragged back down again, so this was an attempt at some meditation and perspective on that. Thank you for reading!


End file.
